How To Take A Selfie On Mars

by Adam Lynton

Offroading doesn't get more extreme than this.

The world's ultimate offroader, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, has sent back a selfie it took at the site called “Buckskin” on a Martian mountain. Taken on 5 August, or the 1,065th Martian day (sol) of the rover’s work on the Red Planet, the one-of-a-kind ‘belly selfie’ marks the third anniversary of her touchdown. The self-portrait was taken from a low-angle, providing a look at the car-sized six-wheeled rover at work collecting a drill sample on lower Mount Sharp. The rover is tasked with general exploration and geological experimentation.

The picture is stitched together from 92 images taken by the high-resolution MAHLI color camera (Mars Hand Lens Imager), located on the end of the rover’s seven-foot-long robotic arm. If you’re wondering why you can’t see the arm in the selfie, NASA explains that “With the wrist motions and turret rotations used in pointing the camera for the component images, the arm was positioned out of the shot in the frames or portions of frames used in this mosaic.”